>> commissioner: so i guess i understand the c.a.c. has expressed the same concerns i expressed when the first trains rolled out but staff has responded to that and given us options on seating. i wondered if the c.a.c. would weigh in on the options. >> yes. >> it was discussed at the last meeting. >> commissioner: i heard you loud and clear on the recommendations. >> do you want more feedback? into this is about outreach. the c.a.c. is involved in this and the early discussion we had suggested the board was of differing minds on this so if the c.a.c. would weigh in. >> our group was of differenting minds to the point where everybody had a hun -- unique

position. >> commissioner: fortunately they have you as a leader to develop a consensus and show this way. thank you for the recommendations. service animal policy is a tricky issue for a variety of reasons. direct director, i assume you heard that loud and clear. any public comment on item 8. now speakers do we have or general public comment ms. boomer? >> clerk: eight. >> commissioner: okay. we will proceed. >> clerk: nine. this an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on matters within the board's jurisdiction but not on today's calendar. john par followed by robert chissana. >> commissioner: welcome.

>> my name is john par. i have the privilege of living in the forgotten zone i call the outer sunset. a little over three months ago my super model gorgeous wife the cfo of her company got out of a light rail line into the abyss exists at 31st and judith street. there's no station. she got killed and came her and her face looked white and she's from northwestern european. ukrainian decent. she's a genius. she said johnny, can you save us, the entire community including her. we wondered how a city can indeed spend $4.5 billion for a broken grand central terminal of the west where no trains will run for probably the next 50

years. isn't that special? my island stub designated by jul julie kircshbaum had trains running on it. it's a great place to park your horses or donkeys at best. she offered street paint and a new sign. that hasn't been done. that's an insult to my intelligence. we should no longer be sitting at the back of the bus much 31st and judith. build proper station should be an agenda item at this board. let's end station inequality in the outer sunset forever. we're human beings like you like the super rich fans who get a brand new station at warrior stadium in a month's time. thank you very much, board. >> commissioner: thank you, mr. par.

mr. chissana. >> clerk: followed by nate drary. >> it's discouraging having anything to do with the taxi industry because in all the years you've done very little to encourage us. however, i read in the newspaper that the taxi industry is not going to get the benefit of the tmc's paying a quarter each which just by uber will be estimated at $10 million. that was last year. in order to pick up wheelchairs and we have such a simple solution that would help you get out of the huge $200 million, $300 million debt you have on

all the "p" medallions. it's simple, all taxis should be fitted to pick up wheelchairs. if they can do it in london and have been doing it there 20 or 30 years at least. it take the burden off the mta as well because you can't pick up all the wheelchairs and it take time and you need more busses. so why are we not doing that? what you need to do is start a program to get taxis, new taxis, all new taxis to accept a wheelchair. that would take the burden off the drivers as well because it would mean occasionally they pick up a wheelchair. and you have to remember the

state law is that these wheelchairs are supposed to mainstream. not go off to a contractor who says we need an appointment to pick you up. >> commissioner: thank you. before drary, welcome back. >> it's been a while. >> commissioner: you're always welcome back. >> good afternoon, directors. i want to talk to you about the taxi restriction policy at sfo. it is based on a lie. the lie of the so-called purchased medallions, 100 individuals paid hundreds of thousands of the permits and they did not buy anything. they didn't acquire equity or collateral value. what they got was a permit to be share croppers with the sfmta. if you bother to wade through

the regulations you'll come to the clear understanding what i'm saying to you is true. what is also true is even if by some fortuitous circumstance they pay off the loan to the credit union, they'll never be able to recover any portion of the sums paid. what they actually paid for say boat ride to nowhere, destination zero and they can't get off. the taxi restriction policy was designed for one purpose, the security of sfmta to protect from the defaults of the so-called purchase holders. it's self-serving by you for your own interests. this destructive policy was approved by you. the board of directors are responsible for the deadly undermining of the taxi business in san francisco .

they designate who shall go and not live and being pushed to the edge of the economic oblivion. it's a selection policy. you are the ones who gave the order. >> good afternoon, again. i'd like to dovetail on what he said. a long-time cab driver has left the industry. he wants to become a muni driver now. he's fantastic. he worked the city and knew his way around. we lost a very good cab driver. you're losing the good cab drivers and the ones who don't

really have any other place to go error staying in the industry and they're the ones not as well trained as andrew. thank you very much for screwing up the cab industry which brings the next point. i'll say it again and again, kay toran is the donald trump of the cab industry. you allowed the san francisco credit union to close out the medallions and based on my e-mail freedom of information request she lied and failed to disclose to us before february 1 the medallions would be added to the pool of "p" medallions. i drive p, k and t medallions. it's not helping the driver p. they lowered the rates on the other types of cabs but we're still waiting a long period of

time at the airport, as the lawsuit state the business is not increased at the airport. the business is going down for us at the airport. it's ludicrous to think it's working. it's working for the medallion holder who doesn't have to pay to the company but pays money themselves and the drivers who get the medallions because the p medallion has gone up. those who never worked the airport before and those getting the for foreclosed medallion. she is donald trump. >> commissioner: your time is up. mr. mahmoud. >> good afternoon, directors. what did do you with the 3,000 drivers, their life, they worked in the taxi industry for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

it's terrible. they lost 60%. i hope this doesn't happen with the heinicke children's. coming to this the master mind of profit to move the taxi commission and move it to mta. you ruin the medallions. in regard to the credit union foreclosed medallions and now they're on a lease. the medallions are foreclosed where are they [indiscernible] and then they're lead back again in the market? and these medallions are fetching now $1300 plus compared to other medallions which are $300. $400. credit union medallions should not be as a purchased medallion

anymore. the people who bought them before 1978 the so-called pre k they're banned to go to the airport. but if they're banned, how come the foreclosed medallions are allowed to go and pick up more than everybody else? this question you have to ask yourself how come this is done? after the rule passed in october, medallion number 672 and 678 foreclosed after that and number two 1448, 653 they foreclosed. it went to foreclosure. 10 medallions went into foreclosure after you passed that rule. >> clerk: heb ert whiner and christopher peterson. those are the last people who turned in a speaker card for

this topic. >> herbert wiener. the thought for the bus stops is make the busses run faster. i noticed on the el terro line, might as well be called el terrible. the runs don't run faster. there's nothing in the professional literature i have ene eliminating bus stops that makes them run faster. please produce them. now, basically, seniors and the disabled are treated as an object. they're like pieces on a chess board. we're going to be sacrificed to make the busses run faster. and basically we're seeing as objects not as human beings. this is inhuman.

i noticed in contrast today there was real concern about the death of the woman. it was tragic but this board showed their concern. i wish it would show the same thing towards seniors and the disabled. we deserve the same. we constitute 20% of the ridership. don't throw us under the wheels of the bus. >> commissioner: thank you very much. next speaker, please. >> clerk: christopher peterson and mike spain. >> i'm rowan cato and i heard interesting things after public comment closed. we could levy higher fines for cars blocking bike lanes and a thought the board should be aware the atlanta city council passed an ordinance yesterday doing exactly that. they'll fine cars parking in bike lanes $100 and truck and

delivery vans $100,000. and there was also a suggestion made i think director eaken maybe who said there could be a study and advocates could tell you where to focus on for enforcing bake lines. we have that already because the 3-1-1 app provides evidence. there's a map someone made recently you can see howard street on the map clearly, by the way, and where the bike lane stops and starts because the violation reports go down there and in particularly when i walked over here i submitted on the polk street bike lane there's no parking on the block or on most the street. there's a red curve and sign that says no stopping towaway.

they never tow anybody. fedex parks there and the hotel ethic has valet parking in the bike lane which seemed to be legalized sort of because there's a no park instead of no stopping sign. if you're looking for places to enforce, have you the information. those are some place to start and i wish real concrete would be put on polk street because the first few blocks it's the only thing it looks like there. >> commissioner: thank you. next speaker, please. >> clerk: christopher peterson followed by mike spain the last two speakers. >> i'm christopher peterson. my comment is for item 12. >> commissioner: we'll come back to you or item 12. mike, you're up. we know you like to wait nor fireworks but today those guys are on break. i will continue to stall until

you are ready. i can't stall forever, mike. >> i know you can't. all right. >> i'm still having technical problems. i wanted to play your voice, the master's voice. >> you're making me uninclined to stall now for you. >> all right. >> commissioner: mr. spain, the floor is yours. >> i'll give this one up. so this month marks the one-year anniversary the lawsuit was filed by the federal credit union against the board and sfmta following that in october there was an attempt to take 20 260 cabs off the street by revoking them by a method of non renewal. at that meeting you passed the rules that now govern the airport restricting those 260 as well as another 800 or so cabs from using the airport the way it traditionally was.

but at the october meeting when you passed that, kay toran never mentioned these permits taken back by the credit union were sitting at the credit union and if you passed the regulations you passed at that time, come february 1, they could be put back out then the street. actually, they could have been before then but for political reasons they weren't until after february 1. so 180 permits, which she didn't mention she was trying to right-size federal credit union. this is all about the lawsuit. the rule changes are all about getting the amount of money they're going have to negotiate with the credit union down by giving the credit union income from the permits. i've said this before and will say it again. it's all about money here. it's all about that lawsuit. the millions of dollars on the

table. how can we get our liabilities down and get the credit union to get money out of this so when we finally go to arbitration -- >> commissioner: thank you. >> i thought that was the 30 seconds. >> commissioner: please finish your sentence. >> and i didn't get to play your golden voice. >> commissioner: well, if you'd like to finish your sentence you may. >> you asked kay toran when this came up six weeks ago, you asked her to explain about the credit union permits and we haven't heard anything from the director or her about why they're being allowed to be put back on the street. >> commissioner: very good. thank you, mr. spain. >> thank you for the extra time. >> commissioner: you're welcome. thank you for coming down. any

>> commissioner: is there in else who wants to speak on public comment. she'll be our final speaker on item 9. >>

>> clerk: your name please? >> renata kavich. so they put the p medallions to have top priority at the airport. so and then k. the team medallions have been eliminated and can't go to the airport which most of us find unfair. they followed all the rules when they were getting their medallions before the k and they should be allowed to operate like the rest of us. the rule was the purchase medallions and they ks start in the first slot when we get in the airport. there should be three purchases and one k. now they're changing it for five, six, seven eight purchases go first and the k maybe one every two hours. it's ridiculous that they're not

letting us move at all hardly unless it's really busy. they're discriminating everybody except the purchased medallions and they're having a hard tike making a living and so does everybody else. the airport is inundated with uber/lyft drivers. i dropped off this morning at united and there was something like 50,000 uber drivers on the top level departure. some dropping off, most going to pick up. the rest of us trying to get in to drop off. it used to be easier. not anymore. there's no discrimination against uber and lyft drivers. they can go hog wild as much as they want to and we are being punished and we're the ones who

pay the fees. >> commissioner: seeing no other speakers, public comment is closed to item 10 consent calendar. >> clerk: mr. chair, no member of the public or member of the board have indicated an interest in sefering -- severing an item. all those in favor, please say aye. opposed? all right. there you have it. >> clerk: moving on to the regular agenda, item 11, presentation discussion regardi regardi regardi regarding sfmta financial statement. >> welcome. good afternoon. i'm leo levinson for the san

francisco transportation agency. >> commissioner: does anyone call you the new senali. >> no one could be the senali. >> commissioner: the floor is yours. >> this is an annual event for you. we are here to demonstrate our fiduciary responsibility by having the results of the financial audit for the agency. i have here from our independent auditors, kpmg to present the results of our audit. >> commissioner: wonderful. it is up. it's on our screens and a believe it's broadcast ong -- broadcasting on tv. >> i'm a senior manager of kpmg

the external auditors. i'm here to present the audit results for the fiscal year 2018. i have in front of you the slides to present. so slide one as part of our audit there were two reports that were issues. the first was the pin and the control over compliance report. both of which were clean opinions, clean reports. no findings noted which is a good thing. >> commissioner: if i can pause you if possible to move that view to full screen. i think it will be easier for the board members and the folks viewing at home.

it's readable. we're going old fashioned style here. if you have the benefit of the full report, our apologies. please continue. >> slide one basically summarizes the two reports that we issued as part of the financial statements both clean reports and opinions. moving on to the next slide the emphasis of the paragraph. in our opinion we have a new paragraph specifically to one of the newly adopted implements.

and this is something that's new implemented not only for m.t.a. but across the city and county of san francisco. and this was identified as part of our audit. the next couple of slides i'll go over the significant accounting policies identified as per the audit. here on page four you'll see it lists the significant policies that we have disclosed in the financial statement. the wishes are consistent with our information of prior year financials and consistent with the industry standards.

and this sane estimate so they -- is an estimate and they have to come up with the input and methodology to come up with the balances. so on slide five, m.t.a. has three big balances on their balance sheet. we have the workers' compensation and claims and liability and pension which are estimates. they do require some type of judgment or estimation when it comes up to these estimates. so it's parts of our audit procedures. we design them to ensure we're adjusting the risks for these estimates.

and this involved our internal actuaries to look at the assumptions to make sure to make sure all the inputs that go into the numbers reflect what we should be considered appropriate. of course there's no disconfirming evidence to state otherwise and no audit findings related to these balances. the fourth estimate is on the post employment benefit for gasb standard and others have also implemented this new standard. it's the first year of implementation and basically it requires for us governments to

record a liability for their other post-retirement benefits. it's similar to peng -- pension when it was implemented. this is the benefit piece. some nuances is that and on the the liability goes across different enterprises. they come up in the allocation that's appropriate for m.t.a. and other enterprises to tell them this is the liability you'll put on the financial statement. slide eight. this is the overrider control. not specific to m.t.a. but there's aus a risk whenev any a

you work on financials there's an override of controls. to address the overvide of controls we do audit procedures such as sitting down with management and understanding how they're booking their journal entries, what are the results they're coming up with, is there appropriate segregation duties? is there someone reviewing them and post-closed entries after we receive the financials and any transactions that happen during the year. therefore there was no audit findings surrounding our procedures. the next couple slides i really some retired communication that are required to present in the board of governance and there's

still a responsibility to maintain control and we do not opine on the internal controls but how you would rate the severity of the findings and if there's significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in control. you can see there was none. page 11. these the required communications. pretty much there were no matters to report in terms of difficulties and any significant related party transaction any fraud or non compliance or

subsequent event making us appear to the board. and this tells you what are management's responsibilities. what's the board's responsibilities an kpmg's responsibilities in terms of issuing the audit and financials. i think that's all i have for today's agenda. >> commissioner: wonderful. very concise and helpful presentation. excellent use of the visual artist to your right. are there any questions? any public comment on this presentation? okay. so no public comment and no questions is a good thing. thank you very much. thank you for the concise and

helpful presentation. now we'll come to something i'm sure we'll have plenty of questions. >> clerk: discussion regarding transit service. i'm also hoping to be concise with no comments. >> commissioner: yet, hope springs eternal. >> i'm julie kirschbaum the director of traffic. i'm here to cover the 90-day action plan and the deep dive we've been taking into the subway performance as well as take step back and looking at a bus network at the request of

the board. we are making good progress on the 90-day plan. we have a number of initiatives as you know and i'm excited to see a lot of strong staff engagement and good momentum around the actions. all of our actions are progressing and we're accomplishing a lot of things i'm proud of and for the most part that is translating into our metrics. with a couple exceptions which i'll go into detail in the following slide and we'll continue to improve service. one of the places we're not meeting our targets left is on the service delivery, which as you know is a fundamental building block to all of our other metrics.

and that's where we have control over the pipeline because a rail operators come from the bus rank. i'm excited to share that we started on monday our largest rail operator -- new bus operator class in at least two years. 57 students. a lot of the investment we're making in this area across the agency is paying off but there's still quite a bit of work to be done. on a more positive note, we have been able to deliver and keep our momentum on reducing gaps in our service. particularly on the rapid network. where 88% of our trips are within our headway goal. what i mean by that is if the rapid network typically runs every five to eight minutes.

what that means is 88% of the time customers are not strong wait more than 12 or 13 minutes for a bus. on the rail side, we are kind of hovering at our short-term target of 20%. but what that means is 20% of the time we're experiencing gaps in the rail network that could be up to 15 minutes. we still have more work to do there. during the construction we've been watching service on the "t" busses. we set a goal of 85% of our trips being within a 12-minute window and we are hitting that target. we are not hitting our target on

our more infrequent routes. we had five in february meeting the target. but as a staff we're reviewing the data weekly. we review it with you monthly but we review it on a closer time frame. in our most recent review we looked at these routes and tried to understand we could do we weren't already doing and last week we did see a pretty big bump closer to the 63% on the infrequent routes and it was due to increased attention in our owl network. we're hitting the headway is critical for people trying to get to where they're going. we're continuing to meet our goals on safety. we're working across the agency with our partner and communications and the safety division to reduce collisions.

and we have met our initial target for subway delay. this graph looks at it from the a.m. and p.m. peak period. we still need to focus on driving down the a.m. but the momentum we're seeing in the p.m. peak has been positive. on the subway performance we're still a work in progress. we did not meet our goal for fewer major delays. we're still hovering around that

number. we saw six-minute delays drop but want to continue reducing these given how disruptive they are to customers on their daily commutes. >> commissioner: what were they? >> i have a whole slide on it. >> commissioner: great. >> the a.m. is just holding it's own is an accomplishment given we are turning four additional trains an hour because of the construction project because the k line is turning at embarcadero. we continue to see it as a huge opportunity. the muni we discovered after spending a bit of management time last week is a need to get trains leaving the subway off

the embarcadero platform faster because they're then blocking everything else trying to come around. we're re-emphasizing that as a critical need. i know i said i didn't think we'd see a lot of movement on this average travel time but in addition to significantly addressing the variability, we saw a minute drop on the average travel time in the p.m. peak from embarcadero to west portal. as well as an improvement in the p.m. pake for have aability. -- p.m. for the availability and that's something we ton focus on and needs more attention.

there's a lot of progress at the end of the plan. i'll drip down deeper into what we've been able to achieve. one thing i wanted to bring your attention to specifically is we reached a major milestone when we rolled out the new harris radio on the l.r.v.s. what that allows us to do is move in the transportation management center. we're no longer trying to manage service in two locations. where we have the "f" line and busses where we have the two stations is challenging and a drain on resources. some of the immediate benefits is we have clearer audio when we talk to operators. we dot no have dead spots. there's time where we'd have to send station agent down to connect with operators because they couldn't here us.

we have crisper communication both with our field staff on the new radio as well as with our operators. we have customer and stop announcement. we are still working hard to try to adjust the audio on the stop announcements. overscrawl overall they're too quiet and you may have a staff announcement echo and that's something we're working through in the next week or so. it is a critical milestone and within the next couple of weeks we'll be moving rail to our modern transportation center. that's the good news. we also did have several major subway delays since february 19th i did want to make sure we talked about as a group. some of which ed provided

details on at the last meeting. our most disruptive delay was on february 28 where the automatic train control system stopped and we had a failure of all three computers. the issue was caused by a glitch in the software and they're working on a repair. we have put in a procedure in place so we won't have the situation again. i do want to emphasize this is -- we had the potential of this for all 20 years of having this software. we've never seen this issue before. because we were having a switch communication issue, every train that came into the subway was coming in as a non-communicating train and the intensity of so many non-communicating trains triggered this rare issue we didn't previously know we had. we've taken steps to avoid it.

we're in the process of fixing it but it's not something where i believe we're at risk for moving forward. >> commissioner: this is where trains were coming in and not acquiring the system and we had a stack of non-acquiring? did they operate in manual or fix the acquisition? >> we were able to fix the acquisition issue but the short period where they were non-communicati non-communicating -- >> commissioner: that's the stacks of dots on the map? >> yes. we also had a train lock up at embarcadero in part user error and we followed up training and we had a delay at west portal caused by a safety violation we have addressed for the individual but also are working to address with all operators. this say location we have seen an increase in signal violations

since the twin peaks project. we want to make sure our operators and inspectors understand how that intersection works. then march 8, we had an issue where we had to evaluate the montgomery station because of heavy smoke. the smoke was caused by arcing on the train and this is shown in the photo here. the carbon bolts were holding and fell down and burn the top of the train. we have inspected our entire fleet and we continue to do so weekly. this is an issue that we will put in a design improvement to address.

moving on to our bus network. as you guys know, san francisco has a fantastic but network. over half a million people board it every day. it's powered by electricity and renewable diesel. it's the greenest fleet in north america and it's not just a daytime network but something people use 24 hours a day. we have seen a tremendous number of positive trends on the bus system. the most notable in my tenure has been the vehicle reliability. we went from tracking vehicle breakdowns in the hundreds of miles or thousand miles to now routinelily seeing 10,000 plus miles between breakdowns. i'm really excited we're going minnesota on thursday and we're actually going to launch the

last hybrid of this procurement as it leaves the plant. that's a really exciting milestone. we'll have a similar celebration this fall when the last trolly leaves as well. the fleet program got to this level because of a very deliberate redesign of our fleet procurement process. the first and most important is that we needed to space out our procurements. if you buy everything at the same time, it's all new and the same time, it's all old at the same time. if have you one problem, you have 1,000 problems so spacing it out is important. in the recent round we got halfway there and over the next 12 years we'll continue that. the goal is to have 75 to 100 busses per year be purchased on a regular basis so you always

have an average age of five to six years. the second critical piece we met is our commitment to meet or exceed the preventive maintenance program of the manufacturers. if you're going to buy a nice expensive bus, you have to keep it nice. the third piece we historically have not done on our fleet is to do a good midlife overshawl -- overhaul and make sure the components of the bus that can't last the body of the bus have a rebuild so it's as reliable in year 12 as two. this is a graph. the red line shows the performance we're get ong -- getting on the older fleet. this is no the credit of our bus maintenance folks. you can see we more than doubled the performance on the new

fleet. a second area we don't talk about is we've transformed how we manage our service. we have a performance group constantly monitoring what the headway and on-time performance is on our routes. they feed that information to our transportation management center that has new and improved rules to monitor gaps and bunching and they communicate that out to our folks in the field that can provide additional support managing terminals or tough pinch points. we also over the last two years have started a new position which is a field manager position. that's like a general manager of the street. it's why i'm able to do this job frankly.

i can go to sleep at night knowing there's somebody who has extensive experience handling very complicated types of incidents and i'll have a report the minute i wake up about what happened and what if anything we need to do differently to keep ourselves safe and reliable. then the third think exciting thing we're seeing on the bus side and system wide is that we even despite our operator shortage, we still are delivering more service than we have in the last 10 years. our service levels, the blue line is a service delivery shows a 20% increase since 2010. we still have lines that are crowded. there's certainly areas we want to continue to invest in. the fact that we are keeping up with our ridership growing i

think is positive. >> commissioner: said 20% since 2010. do you have a sense of the population increase not just the residential but the daily population? i would suspect it's probably a similar number. >> as would i. i don't have the exact statistics at my finger tips. but we have seen job increases and job densifying. >> commissioner: a 20% increase in service over 10 years sounds great and i'm happy about that but we need to keep in mind we have increased demand the same way. we won't be able to plateau. i see skyscrapers and want ads and folks coming still. especially, as you say, as jobs

and maybe homes densify there'll be greater reliance on muni. please continue. >>i >>ing >> unlike rail where we face small and nuanced problems on bus we have challenge. the first is the operator shortage and the second is congestion. on the operator shortage, i am optimistic about the progress we've made though we need to continue the trajectory. on monday we start the largest class we've had in years. we've also been partnering with the mayor's office of economic and workforce development particularly on helping folks get their class b permit.

we opened a list in march and will continue to open a list every two months which is really unprecedented for us. there was a time where we'd open a muni list once a year and that would be enough to fill classes. opening it up every two months and have specific dates so non-profits an other partner that help us recruit operators can plan for that is what we're going to be doing for both may, june and i believe august. we currently have about 300 candidates on our eligible list. in order for them to be new operator candidates they need a class b permit which we previously expected folks to do on their own. in partnering with the city drove program, we've now been able to offer everybody on the list an access to this free

program if they want support to get the class b permit. we are seeing many people take them up on that opportunity. so we're excited for these new approaches and we're going to continue to try things to solve the challenge, which at this point is primarily a pipeline problem. as i said, the second hurdle is congestion. while transit speeds are not degrading at the same rate all the speeds are, we are still seeing impacts particularly on routes where we don't have protection federal traffic. our 15-minute routes and 20-minute routes going through the downtown area. where we have invested in transit priority, we have seen

big dividends. we have worked closely with our partner in the pedestrian and bike programs. s the projects not necessarily bus projec projects like seventh and eighth street have boarding islands which help reduce delay and the same synergy in the forward projects where we make an investment in the rapid network we look at what pedestrian safety enhancements we can do to improve and meet overall agency goals. we are seeing wherer -- where we are making investments a ridership in improvement and we're seeing a drop in ridership but on the corridors where we made investments in transit only lanes and larger vehicles we're seeing an 8% increase in ridership.

so in terms of next steps for the bus network, we very much want to build on our successes. we want to continue to bring you and the community more moving forward projects. over the next year one portal we'll start on is downtown mission. that's an area where we're travelling extremely slow and congested areas. continue fleet replacement and increase use of our gap management tools. as i said before, we're at the beginning of understanding how to use these tools and communicate with operators while they're on the road to make the small adjustments to not catch up to the busses in front of them or not create the big gaps. we're also continuing to tackle the tough problems. we have a huge agency priority around operator hiring. and as we work towards the city wide load share goals i think we'll see positive trajectories

around congestion and the other challenges we're facing. that concludes my presentation. >> commissioner: any public comment on item 12, ms. boomer. >> clerk: mr. chair, christopher peterson. >> commissioner: mr. peterson, gou first and then mr. wiener. thank you for waiting this out. >> you're welcome. a couple comments. first, thank you to the muni for having p.c.o.s and sometimes they're giving muni priority but not consistently. frequently i'm seeing them though we've been waiting in the tunnel and letting cars go through while trains are waiting to get out of the station. i hope there continues to be

management focus on really genuinely giving muni priority there. another bottleneck outside the tunnel i think can have impacts on metro service in the tunnel is st. francis circle. both the "k" and the "m" go through that intersection. you have one train and you can get through quickly. if it's unlucky with the timing it has to wait through an entire cycle. have you multiple complicated car movements in that intersection easily waiting several minutes. if you have multiple trains getting there, that thing gets multiplied. if have you outbound ks and ms stack up behind them, maybe they've waited 5 minutes to get out of west portal and another 10 to 15 minutes in st. francis circle. i hope muni can give focussed attention in terms of giving the

"k" and "m" priority and getting through st. francis circle in a more timely manner. >> commissioner: thank you. mr. wiener. >> i noticed my name is spelled the same way scott wiener's and it should be w-e-i-n-e-r. i think the goal of muni should be service delivery should match the density of the city. now, for decade ago this was the case. you had a comprehensive system. now you're stripping services from the neighborhood and focussing on the most heavily-used line. this is a supply and demand principle instead of services